The CBI raids on the Department of Telecommunications and subsequent searches of the premises of eight new telecom licensees haven’t fazed Communications & IT Minister A Raja.

A CBI spokesperson confirmed that offices in 19 sites across the country had been searched but declined to reveal the names of the firms.

The operations continued until late this evening in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Mohali, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Chennai, Noida and other locations.

Denying any wrongdoing, Raja defended allocation of licences to new operators in January 2008. “All decisions on spectrum licensing have been taken in accordance with procedures laid down by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and in consultation with the Prime Minister.”

Not quite. A scrutiny of recommendations by TRAI in 2007— by which Raja swears — and even earlier in 2003 show that the DoT made significant departures.

For instance, TRAI has consistently said that new licences be granted only through auctions. However, new licences were granted to Unitech Wireless, Swan Telecom (now Etisalat DB), Loop Telecom, Sistema Shyam, Datacom, S-Tel, Allianz Infratech and Spice Telecom in January 2008 on a first-come-first-served basis at a price discovered way back in 2001 when a fourth cellular operator was added to each circle.

Justifying this move, Raja and his officials have repeatedly pointed to TRAI’s August 2007 recommendations, which suggest that Trai did not favour auctioning 2G licences. Again, this is inaccurate. What TRAI said was that it did not favour the auction of spectrum in the 800, 900 and 1800 bands (currently used for 2G services).

... contd.